Research Assistant in Multimodal Retrieval and Language Processing

University of Surrey; Guildford; Hybrid; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading educational institution in Guildford is seeking a Graduate Researcher to work on an eBay-funded project developing a framework for vision-language research. Candidates should have at least an MSc in computer science and strong background in machine learning and natural language processing. The position offers flexible working options and access to world-class facilities.

Benefits

Generous pension

Relocation assistance

Flexible working options

Access to leisure facilities

Family-friendly benefits including on-site nursery

Qualifications

• Strong background in at least two of machine learning, natural language processing, large language models, and multimodal processing.
• Excellent programming skills.
• Experience with scientific writing and preparing research outputs.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and evaluation of the framework for vision-language research.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team.
• Contribute to research publications produced in the project.

Skills

Machine learning

Natural language processing

Large language models

Multimodal processing

Programming

Education

MSc in computer science or related field

Job description

Overview

We are seeking a Graduate Researcher to join a multidisciplinary team working on a research project funded by eBay which aims to create a framework to support vision-language (V-L) research. The framework to be developed will leverage existing pre-trained vision-language models to improve the performance of matching listings with existing products, and for tasks like product listing moderation, attribute extraction, explained relevance prediction. This framework can later also serve as a testbed for customer support chatbots with image understanding and image-based product search. The appointed research is expected to be involved in the development and evaluation of the framework, and to contribute to the research publications produced in the project.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and evaluation of the framework for vision-language research.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team to apply pre-trained V-L models to practical tasks such as product listing matching, moderation, and attribute extraction.
• Contribute to research publications produced in the project.

Qualifications

• At least a MSc in computer science or related field.
• A very good understanding of how visual language models work and how they can be used in practical applications.
• Strong background in at least two of the following areas: machine learning, natural language processing, large language models and multimodal processing.
• Excellent programming skills.
• The ability to work both independently and as part of a collaborative team, often across disciplines.
• Experience with scientific writing and the preparation of research outputs.

About the University

The University of Surrey is a global community of ideas and people, dedicated to life-changing education and research.

Our Culture and Benefits

We are ambitious and have a bold vision of what we want to achieve – shaping ourselves into one of the best universities in the world, which we are achieving through the talents and endeavour of every employee. Our culture empowers people to achieve this aim and to collectively, and individually, make a real difference. In return we offer a generous pension, relocation assistance where appropriate, flexible working options including job share and blended home/campus working locations (dependent on work duties), access to world-class leisure facilities on campus, a range of travel schemes and supportive family friendly benefits including an excellent on-site nursery.